Law Commons^™

The Continuing Violation Theory And Systemic Discrimination: In Search Of A Judicial Standard For Timely Filing, Thelma A. Crivens

Vanderbilt Law Review

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 19641 is one of the most effective federal anti-discrimination statutes in employment discrimination law. Enforcement of this statute has eliminated discriminatory acts directed at individual victims as well as discriminatory policies and practices directed at groups that traditionally have been victims of discrimination. The effectiveness of Title VII in eliminating employment policies that restrict opportunities for a group or class of employees (referred to as systemic discrimination) has been particularly important because of the economic, psychological, and social consequences that this discrimination has on members of the group as a whole. Also, …

Standards Of Proof In Section 274b Of The Immigration Reform And Control Act Of 1986, Carlos A. Gonzalez

Vanderbilt Law Review

On November 6, 1986, President Reagan signed into law the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), proclaiming it to be the most difficult legislative undertaking in the previous three Congresses. The Act's controversial centerpiece provides for sanctions against employers who knowingly hire, recruit, or refer for a fee undocumented aliens. While these sanctions were heralded as the most comprehensive reform in immigration law in over thirty years, opposition to them in Congress and among civil rights organizations was strong. These groups feared that employers seeking to avoid sanctions would discriminate in employment against Hispanics, Asians, and other ethnically or racially …

The Executive Branch And International Law, Arthur M. Weisburd

Vanderbilt Law Review

Public international law, through its rules regulating the dealings between independent nations, purports to impose limits on the actions of all governments, including those of the United States. In this context American lawyers interested in foreign relations may reasonably wonder whether American courts would enforce rules of public international law purporting to bind the United States against the United States government, particularly the executive branch. A fair number of Supreme Court cases have dealt with the enforce ability of treaties in American courts.' Treaties, however, are only one source of international law. The other important source, customary international law, is …

The Law Of Easements And Licenses In Land: Book Review, R. H. Helmholz

Vanderbilt Law Review

A distinguished commentator, Professor A.W.B. Simpson, recently observed that the legal treatise seems to be going the way of the dinosaur and the dodo bird.' To him, and indeed to other thoughtful ob-servers, the treatise's characteristic form appears to have outlived its natural span, or at least lost its reason for existence among serious academic writers. The treatise's focus on a particular and specialized area of the law and its inevitable concentration on the doctrinal analysis of appellate cases now appear quite out of date to these observers, something perhaps worthwhile in a simpler and more complacent era, but which …

The Role Of Federal Safety Regulations In Products Liability Actions, Teresa M. Schwartz

Vanderbilt Law Review

Product safety is the province of both the regulatory and the tort systems. Each system has come under attack in recent years on both the federal and state levels. Through its regulatory policies, appointments, and budget cuts, the Reagan Administration has weakened the federal regulatory system.' At the same time, the Administration has severely criticized the tort system. State legislatures have enacted a myriad of statutes that weaken the tort system by cutting back on the common-law rights of victims, and additional measures are pending in Congress and in state legislatures across the country.'

For the most part, proponents of …

"Evans V. Jeff D." : Putting Private Attorneys General On Waiver, Randy M. Stedman

Vanderbilt Law Review

Prior to the Supreme Court's 1986 decision in Evans v. Jeff D.,fervent debate centered on the practice of simultaneously negotiating settlement on the merits and the award of attorney's fees in civil rights cases. Reasonable attorney's fees for prevailing plaintiffs in civil rights cases are provided at the discretion of the court under section 1988 of the Civil Rights Attorney's Fees Award Act of 1976' (the Fees Act).Sparked largely by the Third Circuit's rejection of the practice of simultaneous negotiations in Prandini v. National Tea Co., wide commentary on the practice soon followed the Fees Act's passage.

Critics of simultaneous …

Digging For The Missing Link, John E. Kennedy

Vanderbilt Law Review

Around the year 1200, in the ecclesiastical court, Martin, a rector,sued "the parishioners of Nuthamstead." In 1315, in the exchequer court, two individuals sued "'the rich burgesses'" of Scarborough "'for themselves and the rest of the middling and poor burgesses'" of that town.' Are there any connections between these examples of medieval group litigation and modern American class actions?

In answering "yes" to this question, Stephen Yeazell has given the legal community a book of substantial significance. By exploring English history from the beginning, he has rediscovered missing links in the ancestral chain of litigation prototypes. Yeazell's discovery is impressive, …

The Unwarranted Implication Of A Warranty Of Fitness In Commercial Leases-An Alternative Approach, Fred W. Bopp, Iii

Vanderbilt Law Review

The classical landlord-tenant relationship has undergone a substantial transformation since its origin in feudal England. The most recent and far-reaching change has been the emergence of an implied warranty of habitability in residential leases.' An overwhelming majority of jurisdictions recognizes this implied warranty either by statute or judicial decisions or both. These same jurisdictions, however, uniformly have rejected an extension of the underlying rationale to the commercial setting by refusing to imply an analogous warranty of fitness or suitability in nonresidential leases. Consequently, while modern notions of consumer protection have made rapid advances in residential tenancies, commercial lease law continues …

Removal, Remand, And Review In Pendent Claim And Pendent Party Cases, Joan Steinman

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Article examines the removability of civil actions that include either pendent claims or pendent parties joined in addition to parties against whom federal questions are alleged. It discusses the remandability of those civil actions or segments of them, and comments on the law governing appellate review of district court remands to state court.' In an effort to reach the wisest resolutions of the various issues posed, it confronts issues of statutory construction, interprets Supreme Court cases, especially Thermtron Products, Inc. v. Hermansdorfer,'and wades in the murky waters of federalism. In the course of this enterprise, the Article analyzes and …

The Myth Of The Liability Insurance Claims Explosion: An Empirical Rebuttal, David J. Nye, Donald G. Gifford

Vanderbilt Law Review

A perceived crisis in the nation's liability insurance system erupted in 1986. Some businesses saw their insurance premiums double in a period of two years, and others found the coverages they required to-tally unavailable. While trial lawyers and consumer groups asserted that insurance company investment and pricing practices, as well as huge profits, had caused the crisis, others alleged that an increased"claims consciousness" among the American public had spawned the liability insurance affordability and availability problems. Richard Berman, a national representative of the United States Chamber of Commerce, proclaimed that the judicial system had "gone berserk" and that litigation was …

Reflections On The House Of Labor, Lee Modjeska

Vanderbilt Law Review

Much has been said of the deteriorating condition and possible fall of the house of labor.' This Essay contains some idiosyncratic reflections on certain aspects of the situation. Contrary to the mainstream of thought, my suspicion, to use Justice Frankfurter's words, is that those"economic and social concerns that are the raison d'etre of unions"remain dominant in our society, that unionism may be inevitable if not indispensable, and that our days of relative labor calm may be ending.National labor policy repeatedly has recognized the reality of modern society, viewed against a long history of industrial unrest, that a union is essential …

The Meaning Of Probative Value And Prejudice In Federal Rule Of Evidence 403: Can Rule 403 Be Used To Resurrect The Common Law Of Evidence?, Edward J. Imwinkelried

Vanderbilt Law Review

In the common law system of evidence, logically relevant evidence is presumptively admissible. The logical relevance of an item of evidence, however, does not guarantee its admission. The common law has developed a number of rules that exclude logically relevant evidence. In some cases, the common law excludes evidence because of doubts about the credibility or reliability of that type of evidence. For example, the best evidence rule rests primarily on skepticism about the trustworthiness of secondary evidence concerning a document's contents.- When the issue is the content of a document, the common law prefers that the document itself be …

The Constitutional Exercise Of The Federal Police Power: A Functional Approach To Federalism, Alan N. Greenspan

Vanderbilt Law Review

The Employee Polygraph Protection Act of 19881 (Polygraph Act) prohibits the use of polygraph examinations by private employers actively participating in commerce or producing goods for interstate commerce. Prior to this federal action, forty-one states had addressed the issue of employer use of polygraph examinations. Twelve states and the District of Columbia prohibit employer use of polygraph tests altogether. Of the remaining states, some require licensing of examiners and others regulate the circumstances under which an employer may require polygraph examination of an employee. According to the legislative history, federal legislation is necessary because state regulations are ineffective: existing state …

The Noblesse Oblige Tradition In The Practice Of Law, David Luban

Vanderbilt Law Review

In 1905 Louis D. Brandeis delivered a talk entitled The Opportunity in the Law to the Harvard Ethical Society.' It was delivered as a pep talk, what Harvard Law Professor Duncan Kennedy, seventy-six years later, would refer to as "the old address to the troops." Brandeis hoped to rally law students to his vision of the moral possibilities of legal practice-specifically, the elite corporate legal practice into which Brandeis could assume his audience would enter. Brandeis was concerned that elite lawyers were becoming thralls of robber-baron capitalists, that they were ignoring the possibilities of law practice as a kind of …

Attorney Advertising And Competition At The Bar, Terry Calvani, James Langenfeld, Gordon Shuford

Vanderbilt Law Review

Generally, advertising tends to lower prices and stimulate competition. This unexceptional statement becomes controversial, however,when applied to the legal profession. Indeed, only the newest members of the bar cannot recall the time when both professional and legal strictures precluded attorneys from advertising. Attorney advertising has been, and probably remains, a controversial subject. This Article analyzes attorney advertising and the regulations that police it. The Article begins by discussing the legal history of restraints on advertising.The Article then presents an economic analysis of the effects of attorney advertising. Finally, the Article examines the empirical evidence measuring the impact of attorney advertising …

The Unique, Novel, And Unsound Adversary Ethic, Thomas L. Shaffer

Vanderbilt Law Review

The dominant ethic in the American legal profession in 1988 is the adversary ethic. The adversary ethic, in the words of the late Justice Abe Fortas, claims that "[l]awyers are agents, not principals; and they should neither criticize nor tolerate criticism based upon the character of the client whom they represent or the cause that they prosecute or defend. They cannot and should not accept responsibility for the client's practices." This ethic is the principal-and often the only-reference point in professional discussions. Although it is embedded in our professional codes, our cases, and our law offices, this Article argues that …

Making Criminal Defense A Crime Under 18 U.S.C. Section 1957, Paul G. Wolfteich

Vanderbilt Law Review

In 1984 the President's Commission on Organized Crime concluded that money laundering was the lifeblood of organized crime.'The Commission found that drug traffickers and racketeers exploited weaknesses in the Bank Secrecy Act to launder much of their income,estimated by one source to be 150 billion dollars annually. In response,the Commission recommended legislation to strengthen currency reporting laws, to extend the investigative powers of federal agencies, and to create a new money laundering offense.' This new legislation would hold criminally liable persons who conduct a monetary transaction with knowledge or reason to know that the funds involved were derived from unlawful …

Making Society's Legal System Accessible To Society: The Lawyer's Role And Its Implications, L. Harold Levinson

Vanderbilt Law Review

During the past two decades the legal profession has been remarkably, even frantically active in examining and drafting standards of professional conduct. The American Bar Association (ABA) adopted the Code of Professional Responsibility in 1970. Most states adopted the Code with relatively minor variations during the 1970s. The ABA repealed the Code in 1983 and adopted, in its place, the Model Rules of Professional Conduct. By the beginning of 1988 one-half of the states had implemented the Model Rules, with significant variations from the ABA version in some of these states, while the remaining states either had rejected the Model …

The Law: From A Profession To A Business, Norman Bowie

Vanderbilt Law Review

The public believes that the practice of law has become a business.They also believe that lawyers are in the profession for the money and that everything a law firm does is motivated by greed-well not every-hing, in L.A. Law lawyers are motivated by greed and lust. Allegedly,lawyers overcharge, create work, and delay in order to make more money. In return lawyers produce nothing useful; they do not make cars, steel, or heavy machinery. They are perceived by many as social parasites who make a handsome living off the productive labor of others. Economists note that the United States' workforce has …

A Middle Ground Approach To The Exclusionary Remedy: Reconciling The Redaction Doctrine With United States V. Leon, Rosemarie A. Lynskey

Vanderbilt Law Review

The fourth amendment to the United States Constitution commands that the right of individuals to be secure against unreasonable searches shall not be violated. The amendment further provides that a search warrant must be supported by probable cause and particularly describe the place to be searched and items to be seized.' The United States Supreme Court has held that the only effective means of enforcing this mandate is to suppress all evidence seized pursuant to a search warrant that violates the fourth amendment because it lacks either particularity or probable cause. Difficult questions arise, however, when a warrant contains some …

The Challenge Of Change: The Practice Of Law In The Year 2000, James W. Jones

Vanderbilt Law Review

The past two decades have witnessed extraordinary changes that will have a lasting impact on the structure of the legal profession and the ways in which lawyers approach their practices. Some twenty years ago the legal profession was remarkably stable, having changed little in the preceding 100 years. The bar was relatively small, fairly homogeneous, mostly male, and overwhelmingly white anglo-saxon Protestant.The profession was, in the main, a close-knit fraternity of like-minded practitioners who shared a strong sense of common values and a general disdain for any efforts to commercialize the profession. The American Bar Association's 1908 Canons of Ethics …

The 1988 Vanderbilt Law Review Symposium The Modern Practice Of Law: Assessing Change, William E. Pilsk

Vanderbilt Law Review

The legal profession has long embraced an ironic contradiction:lawyers help clients respond to or create change, yet at the same time lawyers steep themselves in tradition and pride themselves on professional stability. Thus we have the image of the conservative, pedigreed attorney, clad in dark wool, who helps his client accomplish new and daring objectives, but who generally resists changes in his or her relationship with the client. For many years this image has served as the ideal for the legal profession, and rules and standards evolved to preserve that ideal.For generations the legal profession has adhered to its traditions …

First Amendment Standards For Government Subsidies Of Artistic And Cultural Expression: A Reply To Justices Scalia And Rehnquist, Lionel S. Sobel

Vanderbilt Law Review

May an opera house limit its productions to operas, or must it also show rock musicals? May a municipal theater devote an entire season to Shakespeare, or is it required to book any potential producer on a first come, first served basis?"'" As Professor Kenneth Karst observed in his comment on Southeastern Promotions, the Court's majority "answered these questions with silence."The failure of the Court to respond to Justices Scalia and Rehnquist is puzzling, because in both cases their questions are easily answered. ...

None of these answers, however, would have required a different result in Arkansas Writers' Project or …

The Future Of Labor-Management Cooperative Efforts Under Section 8(1)(2) Of The National Labor Relations Actfff, David H. Brody

Vanderbilt Law Review

Much of the current debate concerning labor-management cooperative efforts centers on section 8(a)(2) of the National Labor Relations Act (the Act), which makes dominating, interfering with, or contributing to the formation or administration of any labor organization an unfair labor practice. On its face, this section may inhibit cooperative efforts through a prohibition of management support for employee organizations. The effect of section 8(a)(2), however, need not be so restrictive because of the Act's underlying concern for the effectuation of employee freedom of choice. A concern for employee free choice provides a means for permitting positive cooperative efforts, consistent with …

Alternatives To The United States System Of Labor Relations: A Comparative Analysis Of The Labor Relations Systems In The Federal Republic Of Germany, Japan, And Sweden, Linda L. Rippey, David H. Brody, Patrick S. Bryant, Thomas T. Crouch

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Special Project Note analyzes the labor relations systems of the Federal Republic of Germany, Japan, and Sweden, focusing on the statutory developments as well as the social, political, and economic factors that shape those systems. Parts II through IV discuss the general structure and operation of each of these systems. Part V compares and contrasts these systems to the American system by applying them to a hypothetical corporate merger. Finally, Part VI discusses the feasibility of a partial or total adoption of any of the three foreign systems by the United States.

Book Review: Legal Papers Of Andrew Jackson, Walter F. Pratt, Jr.

Vanderbilt Law Review

The Legal Papers of Andrew Jackson is a handsomely edited book and a credit both to its editors and its publisher." James W. Ely, Jr. and Theodore Brown, Jr. have done an impressive job of supplementing the limited manuscript record with information about the attorneys, the litigants, and the issues involved in each of the selected cases.' In fact,the additions are so substantial that the title is somewhat misleading:this is really a carefully documented account of the history of law in central Tennessee between 1787 and 1804. The result is a valuable addition to the emerging history of law in …

Interjurisdictional Certification And Choice Of Law, John B. Corr, Ira P. Robbins

Vanderbilt Law Review

There is a story, probably apocryphal, that, at a 1970s conference discussing the great potential and even greater problems of some economically developing countries, a rather cynical American economist is supposed to have remarked that "Brazil is the country of the future-and always will be." Some commentators believe that much the same could be said about the certification process, but with greater accuracy. Certification has beguiled and to some extent disappointed two generations of legal scholars.' Intended to resolve problems that arise when a court of one jurisdiction must apply the law of another jurisdiction, certification is the process by …

Hybrid Employees: Defining And Protecting Employees Excluded From The Coverage Of The National Labor Relations Act, Patrick S. Bryant

Vanderbilt Law Review

Any discussion of labor-management relations naturally assumes two parties: labor and management. Fundamental to both the industrial philosophy and labor legislation of the United States has been the assumption of mutually exclusive and largely adversarial camps of "employers" and "employees." This rigid dichotomy, however, fails to recognize the existence of a third group of workers that fits neither the labor nor the management typology. These workers are best described as hybrid employees: workers who arguably deserve many of the statutory protections afforded to labor but who may be aligned too closely with the employer's interests to warrant the protection of …

Introduction: Special Project - Labor Management Cooperation, Journal Staff

Vanderbilt Law Review

In the midst of the industrial strife and upheaval of the 1930s, the United States Congress, with the passage of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), established the legal framework that regulates the rights and interests of both labor and management through an adversarial collective bargaining process.' As domestic businesses have expanded to serve a worldwide market, however, the modern labor-management relationship is experiencing intense pressure from foreign competition that is rattling the adversarial process' foundations. In an attempt to raise productivity and quality, many American businesses have participated in cooperative efforts with employees, focusing one employee participation in the …

The Exchange-Trading Requirement Of The Commodity Exchange Act, William L. Stein

Vanderbilt Law Review

The Commodity Exchange Act (CEA) makes it illegal to trade a contract for the purchase or sale of a commodity for future delivery-a"futures contract"-unless the contract is executed on a federally designated exchange. Despite its long history of trouble-free administration and operation, this central premise of futures regulation recently has been attacked as unworkable and undesirable. Some argue that the requirement discourages commercially useful off-exchange transactions. They claim that even if such transactions fall within the letter of the requirement, off-exchange transactions do not implicate the trading restriction's policy concerns. In contrast, others suggest that off-exchange

transactions threaten the safety …